


Idiom for Idiots

by TheWhiteLily



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action, And possibly mildly successful humour, Banter, Gen, and John "Danger" Watson, featuring Sherlock "Reckless Idiot" Holmes, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 03:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8732266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWhiteLily/pseuds/TheWhiteLily
Summary: The police are going to be too late to catch the perpetrators.  Well.  Not quite, because Sherlock knows how to press people's buttons.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the fan_flashworks "Rock" challenge

"Now what?" asked John, pulling aside the tendrils of a potted vine to peer through the wall of the greenhouse at where the thieves were escaping down the driveway.  "If we chase, they'll just run faster.  How far away are the police?  Why can you never text Lestrade  _before_  we go—Sherlock?"

Sherlock had picked up a smooth, palm-sized rock from the potting bench and was frowning at it, tossing it in his hands.  The succulent garden alongside the driveway had been littered with them, John remembered.  

Apparently making a decision, the detective snatched the rock out of the air with a grin.  "That'll work," he said and, before John could stop him, hurled it through the open door of the greenhouse to land with a clatter at the feet of the escaping men.

John groaned as the they turned, spotted their observers and skidded to a halt, pointing and exchanging brief words. He grabbed Sherlock’s arm as the detective raised another rock to throw, heedless of how the other men had turned and were bending to the garden bed to pick up their own…  
  
And then John was tackling Sherlock sideways and rolling them behind the meagre shadow of the potting bench, as the thieves returned fire in kind, returning Sherlock’s missile with punitive interest.  Sherlock’s coat pooled over them both as a shield as the greenhouse walls and roof fractured into dagger-like glass shards and began to fall around them like hail with a grudge.  
  
“What the hell, Sherlock?” hissed John at the man lying on top of him. “Did you even _think_ about where we _are_?”  
  
“It got their attention,” Sherlock hissed back. Another volley of rocks smashed through what remained of the glass above them and thudded into the rack of pots behind them, tipping over to mix with the shattered glass in a spray of dirt, tangled vines and squelching red fruit.  
  
“Their attention?” demanded John, closing his eyes and ducking his chin to shelter under the cover of Sherlock's flipped-up collar as another shower of glass shattered overhead and tinkled to the ground beside his head. “We’re in a bloody glasshouse, Sherlock! What possessed you to _throw a bloody stone_ at them?”  
  
“They're not running any more, are they?  Hooking into cultural idiom is a good way to predict responses to—and there’s the sirens,” Sherlock cut himself off smugly. He climbed to his feet to watch the the thieves scrambling to escape around the cars pulling up around them on all sides, brushing glass shards off the shoulders of his intact-seeming coat. John wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he’d had the thing woven with kevlar for the way it seemed to stand up to Sherlock’s mistreatment. “Twelve minutes, he's improving.”  
  
Sherlock went to stride down the path towards the commotion, but stopped abruptly as his leg wobbled under him and made him stumble.  John followed his faintly puzzled stare down at… at the six inch shard of glass protruding from his calf.  
  
“Fuck, Sherlock!”  
  
John knelt carefully among the broken glass, ripping the fabric of Sherlock’s trousers further around the protruding shard, and inspected the injury. It wasn’t serious, he realised quickly. The shard’s position made it likely to have missed the posterior tibial artery, and the red stain was barely oozing out from around the embedded object. Careful removal somewhere with better light, a few stitches, and a week or two taking it easy, and Sherlock would be just fine.  
  
“Ah, excellent,” said Sherlock. In hindsight John realised this particular occasion of apparent mind-reading had probably been due to watching John’s shoulders slump in relief. “All in all, a good night’s work, I think. Murderous housebreakers caught, another idiotic idiom disproved....”  
  
John glared at him. “You were  _lucky_ ,” he snarled as the adrenaline began to withdraw, leaving only the fear as he looked around at the spears of glass embedded deeply into the soil around them. “Any one of those shards could have hit a major blood vessel.  You could have been killed— _I_ could have been killed!”

“Really, John,” scoffed Sherlock. “It was the best way to delay them, and the chances of....”

“I’ll make you go to A&E!” threatened John. “I’ll do it, for pulling a stunt this dangerous!  Minimal blood, Saturday night, that'll be hours of waiting to be seen!”

Sherlock gave him a look of condescension and then nodded back towards the driveway. “One’s running this way,” he said. “Looks like the police haven’t quite got the angle to get in front of him.”  
  
“Don't change the subject, Sherlock,” John warned him, trying not to eye the fleeing man. "We're talking about your reckless idiocy!"

Sherlock was right, though. If the man was fast, he was going to slip the cordon of police and be over the fence and away down the parallel road before they could get to him. If _John_ was fast, he could head him off before he got anywhere close.

“Although who knows what weapons he might have on him?” mused Sherlock, apparently unfussed. “They've killed before—it’d be _really dangerous_ if a civilian tried to get in this one's way now, wouldn’t it?” He was casually using a stray gardening glove to brush the loose shards off the potting bench, so he could take the weight off his leg without getting glass embedded in a more personal location. After a moment, he looked up at John again from his perch. “Are you still here?”  
  
John sent Sherlock another filthy look, but...   
  
He hurdled through the newly ventilated wall of the greenhouse and angled for the fence, cursing Sherlock under his breath as he ran.  

“Then you'll be stitching me up back at Baker Street?” Sherlock called after him.

John didn't dignify that with a response. Bloody Sherlock bloody Holmes.


End file.
